Missions
A session of XROADS is referred to as an "event", is comprised of one or more missions, and begins in the Situation Room. It is here that intel on enemy movements is collected and collated into revealing what possible mission targets are available for the day. This also serves as an opportunity for soldiers to spend some time together out of combat roleplaying, training, and reviewing previous mission logs. When the alert sounds, the players will be presented with the mission briefing. There may be multiple missions to attempt in a session if the resistance can field enough soldiers. It is also possible for there to be more available missions than the resistance has the capacity to deal with at once. In these cases, the team will have to choose which target objectives are prioritized over others. Mission Briefing Each Mission Briefing will have the following information: Objective: What the squad must achieve in order to have a successful mission. This could be hacking a relay, extracting a VIP, rescuing hostages, as well as many others. Enemy Activity: This indicates the approximate strength of the enemy forces in the area - how many units they can expect to encounter. Squad Readiness: This indicates how much time the squad has to prepare for the mission. Mission Time: How long the squad has to accomplish their task, in turns. Evac: How the team is extracted from the mission, whether it’s at a fixed point, within a certain time limit, etc. Mission Preparation Squads need time to properly prepare for a mission, finding the proper insertion zone, timing their assault to minimize enemy contact, etc. This is represented by the Squad Readiness score on a mission briefing, presented as a numerical value. Think of this as the squad-building “budget”. Each soldier costs 1 point. The exceptions being that Grenadiers, Gunners, and Technicals cost 1.5 points, and Shinobi cost 0. After the squad is assembled, for every full point the squad total is -above- the Readiness Level, the Enemy Activity will increase one level. For every full point the squad total is -less- than the Readiness Level, the enemy activity will decrease one level. Equipment Before deployment, each soldier can select their equipment from the resistance cell’s stash. Some equipment is in ample supply for everyone, while others are rarer or more costly and as such have a limited availability. The resistance quartermaster will provide access to the stash after the missions are selected in the situation room, including introducing new equipment that may have been scavenged/developed in between events. It is up to the squad to determine the best distribution of gear. Upon completion of the mission, the soldier may keep any equipment they had on their person for subsequent deployments. A note on enemy equipment: ADVENT weapons technology appears to be oddly configured such that range never figures to be a particular boon or penalty to them. In exchange for this achievement, it appears they have sacrificed stability as all known instances of downing enemy troops results in their weapons self-destructing. They do, on occasion, leave behind useful technology, but only when a resistance operative is able to close within range of the dropped item and use their integrated dampening device to disable the auto-destruct on them within a short time frame (3 turns). Or...not eradicated by explosives, like, say...a grenade, Bob. Debriefing/Story Boards At the conclusion of an event, a summary of the objectives will be recounted in terms of which were achieved. It is at this time that players will track whether their soldiers were wounded badly enough to need to sit out the next event, handle any promotions they may have gained, and collectively take part in making decisions for the future of the resistance. There will be opportunities to voice preference for requests of support staff to guide the resistance's other efforts. A request "We need to increase our survivability in the field" might yield new armor developments, or possibly a larger stash of medikits.